and boom as the president auditions a new attorney general. >> jeff sessions is indeed the most dangerous porn star the way i respect a career woman. >> why even the first lady herself is rebuking rudy today. >> she believes in her husband. she knows it's not true. >> and donald trump's fascination with asbestos. >> a lot of people could say if the world trade center had asbestos, it wouldn't have burned down. >> why it's one of the reasons scott pruitt still has a job. >> a lot of people in my industry think asbestos is the greatest fireproofing it fear ever made. >> whether he "all in" starts right now. good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes. instead of preparing for his summit with north korea in four days, today the president spent his morning tweeting truly wild conspiracy theories about the mueller probe and apparently

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watching fox news. this is the cable channel's hosts are advising witnesses on destroying evidence and reportedly petitioning to run the department of justice. politico reports jeanine pirro a weekend host on trump tv has been lobbying trump advisers to take over as attorney general. piro is one of the most rabid critics of the mueller probe and senior doj leadership. >> prosecutors and fbi agents working to change the course of political history, a shadow government whose agenda is to maintain their own power and control. a deep state we thought existed only on the pages of novels. the single most dangerous person to the agenda of president trump, the republican party and ultimately to all americans is the attorney general of the united states himself, jeff sessions. jeff sessions is indeed the most

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dangerous man in america. >> according to "new york times" reporter maggie haberman, at one point piro interviewed to be the deputy attorney general. that would be the number two job at main justice only to meet resistance from one jeff sessions. funny that. a trump advisers reportedly told sessions if he didn't give her a hearing, the president might end up giving her the supreme court. politico reports the president raised the possibility last year of nominating her to a federal judgeship though that may have been flattering, not a serious offer. she has been a leading proponent of so-called spygate aimed at discrediting the special counsel. that story has fallen apart as more and more and more republican lawmakers have publicly told the truth which is to push back on the president's baseless claim, including house speaker paul ryan who is one of a small group briefeded on the actual contents and facts of the matter last week in response it,

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fox business host lou dobbs is pushing for a coup d'etat in the house gop. >> why, i've got to just ask, why in the world are you putting up, not you, but your conference putting up with a man who could do what he did today at that leadership briefing and turn it against the idea, the very idea that evidence matters in his judgment of whether or not there was a spy? >> there is no defense today for paul ryan siding with the fbi and department of justice. >> how dare the speaker side with the fbi and department of justice? now, there's no fox news host more central to trump word and its battle against the mueller probe than sean hannity who reportedly talks to the president on the phone before bedtime, a little catchup chat. is known around the white house as the shadow chief of staff. he's one of only three as you'll recall legal clients of the president's long-time lawyer, michael cohen. hannity seems to have been

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pretty unnerved by a report from cnbc the special counsel's team is asking witnesses to turn in their personal phones in order to inspect their encrypted messaging programs. >> i don't know. if i advised him to follow hillary clinton's lead, delete all your e-mails and then acid wash the e-mails and hard drives on your phones, then take your phones and bash them with a hammer into little itsy bitty pieces, use bleach bit, remove the sim cards and take the pieces and hand them over to mueller and said hillary clinton, this is equal under the law. >> ha, ha. hannity insisted he was joking. you see he was making a point about the supposed double standard for hillary clinton. but the thing is he kept making the same joke over and over and over again. >> i wonder if everybody that has phones if they did what hillary did and that's delete the e-mails, delete the app, acid wash the phone, break it up

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to little bits and take the sim cards out, how would that work out for all the people robert mueller is requesting phones from. >> my advice to them not really kidding, bad advice, would be follow hillary's you know lead. delete them, acid wash them, bust them up, take out the sim cards and say here, mr. mueller. i'm following hillary's lead. >> please, he's making people nervous. >> boom, crack it up and ansay here, mr. mueller. courtesy of hillary. >> it's just a joke that you say over and over about destroying evidence that you just talk about destroying evidence. for the latest on the efforts to derail the trump probe, matt miller, spokesperson during the obama administration and retired federal judge nancy get yourner, senior lecturer at harvard law school. matt, the conspiracy theories have gotten increasingly baroque and sort of hard to even track or follow, and increasingly discredititied.

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there's like a full-court press over there right now that only intensifies day by day. >> you even have this weird thing where the president twice in the last couple days has pulled conspiracy theories almost too crazy for fox news, things that show up on right wing websites they start on the depths of reddit and has tweeted them out. some of the craziest conspiracy theories. you see the president and his allies know they have to find a way to diz kret this investigation one way or the other. you have this weird thing where they will -- the president launches his attacks, fox news does what they do and allies in congress who have a quasi investigative procedure where they can drag documents out of the justice department. i think they were very surpriseds to see they've had things blow up in their face before. it must have been surprising to see paul ryan come out publicly and say this doesn't say what the president says it does. not just ryan but trey gowdy who before this never met a

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conspiracy theory he didn't like. he endorses the work on the fisa application for carter page, pursued the benghazi investigation for several years. so it's a little bit -- there's a little bit of some of their theories falling apart on the right and what you see are these kind of histrionics on the part of the president and his allies on fox when that happens. >> nancy you're a former federal jauj and oversaw a courtroom which people would have to turn over devices and things like that when compelled by subpoena. i want to be clear what your advice would be for anyone who was told to turn their devices over. >> not to pay attention to it for a minute. not to pay attention to hannity's view rather of destroying evidence. not ta pay attention to it. no, it's quite extraordinary. the notion that the hillary situation is the equivalent of this is really just astonishing. we have to keep ongoing back to first premises here, the fbi and

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the intelligence community said there was hacking in our election and it was done at donald trump -- to benefit donald trump. that is a given. so the notion that there is any illegitimacy, that it isn't appropriate to follow whatever leads with regard to that is absurd. >> there's also now the use -- there's a sort of trick they're trying to pull off, matt, in which the president's legal team, giuliani who i don't know if you can call him the president's lawyer. he's kind of like the president's buddy or surrogate or guy. >> publicist. >> he seems more like the guy who is organizing the president's bachelor party than the guy who is representing him in any legal sense. that said, giuliani now saying that he's telling the "associated press" on thursday that trump won't do an interview in the investigation unless they see the documents at issue briefed to the gang of eight themselves. he added we want to see the documents. this is confidential information about the investigation into his client. this matters far more to my client than to any member of congress.

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what do you think of that? >> it's absurd. no subject of an investigation can make those kind of demands of a prosecutor or the fbi when they're under investigation. but i think you see giuliani feel empowered to make the claims because you have allies in congress who made some of the same demands, demanding the documents be turned over to congress. that's never happened before in the middle of an investigation. once you've crossed the threshold where the department of justice is doing things it doesn't usually do, it gives him the ability to come out and say this. we talked about how they're trying to undermine the investigation. that's obvious. it's kind of the playbook they used in the clinton investigation which is to heap pressure on the justice department, pressure from the conservative media, pressure from the campaign trail, pressure from congress. they know that this investigation won't be shut down, bob mueller will not be fired. rod rosenstein can't do that. just as jim comey gave hem little things that turned out to be big things like that press conference that, had a huge impact, there are going to be big decisions they want to go their way.

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does' problem a subpoena to the president, does' problem a report being released to congress, other little things along the way. they want to put just enough pressure maybe some decisions go their way. >> does that make sense to you, nancy? >> i think more is going on here. i think there is no way on earth that any credible lawyer would recommend that trump give an interview to mueller. nobody would ever do that. i think they're creating a series of trip wires here so that they can say over and over again, we really want to talk to mueller, we really want to come clean. there's no issue, no collusion. and i think they're setting standards and requirements that they know mueller can't meet that mueller would not meet to justify no conversation with mueller, tolet mize that. i can't imagine mueller has all the cards here. he doesn't have to agree to any of this. >> matt miller and nancy get yourner, good to have you both. as we said, house speaker paul ryan's admission yesterday he's seen no evidence of a spy

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planned in the trump campaign has opened the floodgates for other gop lawmakers to push back on the president's claim including today senator lindsey graham. but ryan's admission has landed him in hot water with the far right fringe of his caucus which made noises about challenging his speakership. tonight ryan made clear he's still a loyal member of the team. >> let me say one more point. in all of this, in any of this, there has been no evidence that there's any collusion between the trump campaign and the president trump and russia. let's make that really clear. there's no evidence of collusion. this is about russia and what they did and making sure they don't do it again. >> i'm joined now by mark warner, senator from virginia, vice chair of the intelligence committee. do you agree with speaker ryan, there is no evidence what soever of any collusion between the trump campaign and russia? >> i respectfully disagree strongly with the speaker. let's just talk about what's out in the public domain.

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the mueller investigation has brought 14, 15 indictments. guilty pleas. the indictments include the president's campaign manager. we've got the one of the individuals, mr. papadopoulos who clearly the russians reaped out to with information that was harmful to the clinton campaign and he's already pled guilty. there was a, i think it was two years ago today where there was the infamous trump tower meeting where russian agents were brought in to meet with trump junior, kushner, the campaign manager, with the idea of bringing dirt on hillary clinton. the president himself a week after that meeting went on national tv and basically said hey, if you've got dirt on hoda kotb, why don't you just bring it out and you then had the president go ahead and basically doctor a statement about the contact of that meeting.

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so just those items you show an awful lot of intent to include from the russians and you obviously see from donald trump jr.'s own e-mail traffic that he was anxious to have that information. and that doesn't even get to the fact, chris, of just look at the president's actions in the last ten days where he's been constantly haranging about the mueller investigation, regretting the fact that he had jeff sessions as the attorney general since sessions recused himself from the mueller investigations. this whole fabrication about planting a spy, by the fbi which even his republican colleagues have acknowledged the fbi acted totally appropriately. i just would ask your listening and viewing audience whether these are the actions of somebody who's got nothing to hide. >> you just mentioned something that speaker ryan talked about he said there's no evidence of this i think frankly preposterous claim of a spy in the campaign. graham saying the same thing. and yet the department of justice offering a briefing to

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gang of eight which you're included next week for another briefing on this confidential informant. what is that about? >> well, what was outrageous about the first meeting, i'll get to what the next briefing is about. what was outrageous about the first meeting is that originally and this was so inappropriate, the white house and at least one of its allies were trying to force the director of national intelligence, the head of the fbi and the deputy attorney general to disclose classified information about an individual. luckily, they didn't. they also wanted to have that secret meeting with just partisans, just republican members. that would have been totally against all established norms and operations of how we share classified information. luckily they stood strong and didn't. we got ta briefing. those documents were there in that briefing. we decided that we'd rather in the hour and a half plus that we were there hear from the actual heads of those agencies. now, if members want to go back and i'll go back and look, as

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well at the actual documents, i'm happy to do that but i think what they reflect is the absolute consensus that everyone except one individual who came out of those meetings who said fbi acted totally appropriately. >> you will be in that meeting, part of the gang of eight includes your counterparts in the house including devin nunes, the chair of the house intelligence committee. am i correct that you and your republican counterpart senator burr on your senate committee have concluded it was nunes or someone in his orbit responsible for leaking texts of yours to the media? >> let's put it like this. the house committee has not operated within the established norms of how intelligence is kept secret, in terms of how investigations are ongoing. richard burr and i i'm proud of our bipartisan investigation. we're going to keep our eye on the ball and we'd like to be done but we've got to follow up. >> senator, that's diplomatic

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and you've mystic of you. my question is, my understanding is the conclusion that you and burr came to is someone in that committee, committee staff under the aegis of devin nunes leaked your personal text messages to the media. >> let's put it like this. if we were to have any of those conclusions we wouldn't share it with the media but we would share it with appropriate sources. >> senator warner, thank you very much for making time. >> thanks, chris. next, why the spokesperson for melania trump is slapping down comments from one rudy giuliani. what he said about stormy daniels in two minutes.

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it may be that stormy daniels' multiple lawsuits against president trump and his personal lawyer michael cohen are rattling the trump team or it may be that rudy giuliani is once again kind of winging it. but in the matter of stormy daniels giuliani las taken it upon himself to say that the first lady believes her husband and then some.

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>> she believes in her husband. she knows it's not true. i don't even think there's a slight suspicion it's true when excuse me, when you look at stormy daniels. i know donald trump and look at his three wives. right? beautiful women. classy women. women of great substance. stormy daniels? >> yes, i respect porn stars. don't you respect porn stars? or do you think they desecrate women? do you think that porn stars don't respect women and therefore, sell their bodies. >> so yes, i respect all human beings. i even have to respect you know criminals. but i'm sorry, i don't respect a porn star the way i respect a career woman or a woman of substance or a woman who has great respect for herself as a woman and as a person and isn't going to sell her body for sexual exploitation.

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so stormy, you want to bring a case, let me cross-examine you. >> the first lady's spokeswoman said pointedly in a statement, "i don't believe mrs. trump has ever discussed her thoughts on anything with mr. giuliani." to discuss the battle between stormy daniels and the white house attorney lisa green and elie mystal. what is he doing? >> whatever it is it's not that classy. let me offer a classier alternative the next time rudy is asked about his client's wife's feelings. than a long diatribe about classy women, pretty women, porn star reputations. how about i don't know? you'll have to ask her or wait, that's my mobile ringing.i've got to get that call. >> the thing about this, first of all, he's having the time of his life clearly he's enjoying this. >> there is the greatest thing that's happened to rudy giuliani just coming off his third divorce just as a factual matter.

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he never saw a microphone or interview he didn't want to do an never got a question about anything -- he's opining about north korea, talking about the nature of sex work. >> he's important again. >> and yes, exactly which is not a legal representation, just to be clear. >> look, rudy giuliani wants to have a respectoff with stormy daniels. that's fine because he's going to lose. all right? like let's look, if we want to talk about how people make their money, let's look at what rudy giuliani, how rudy giuliani made his living for the past years. you want to go through his client roster like i did? he's represented oxycontin. their executives had to plead guilty for misleading the products about their drugs. he represented a shady qatarian e pl ir who alleged shielded terrorists including khalid shaikh mohammed. he's representing hank hashir who got his start running drugs. rudy giuliani has no credibility.

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i do not respect lawyers with a client roster of rudy giuliani. >> here's the other question. i mean, he keeps saying things that are going to -- it seems to me like if you're the president's lawyer, what you want to do is cabin him off from everything having to do with stormy daniels and michael cohen always. rhetorically, legally. they've inserted themself into that because they've had the assertion of privilege. you don't want to get further suck needs that. am i wrong about what the strategy would be in. >> here's one way. if rudy, big if, was trying to besmurnlg stormy daniel's reputation on behalf of the defamation suit that stormy has filed, there are about a million different ways to attack that lawsuit and probably last on your list would be complaining about the credibility of a woman who i would say is a successful entrepreneur in an industry dominated by misogynistic men. >> right. >> isn't this the old game and i mean old game, this the puritan cal game.

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they're trying to turn stormy daniels into hess per prin. there's only one person that needs the scarlet letter. that's donald trump. that's why the strategy for so many people is deeply offensive. >> yeah, him getting up there and beak saying who are you going to believe the president of the united states or this is porn star, this trash basically. here's what is michael avenatti, this is a softball lobbed across the plate for him. this is what he had to say. >> we have refocused our efforts as a result of mr. giuliani's piggish comments. they are a disgrace. he should be embarrassed. he should immediately resign and if he's not going to resign, he should be fired by the president. this guy is an absolute pig. i said it last night. i said it this morning. i'm going to keep saying it until a change is made. >> i'd like to suggest there might be a better member of president trump's cabinet to speak on behalf of melania. it would be a cabinet member who

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loves, for example, fancy hotel mattresses. and high end hotel bath products and he's there. >> scott pru night apparently still on the. >> speaking of mel lannia, i thought that statement was pretty interesting. let's give the context here. melania trump married to the president of the united states. raising their young son. has had to watch presumably, she's a human being engaged in the world, watching all this coverage of her husband's many alleged affairs including when her son was a newborn. she then doesn't make any public appearances for quite some time. makes one, there's speculation what that is about. today a question that is meant not with, of course, she believes her husband, right? you could take the opportunity to say that, that is met with a very resounding i don't believe mrs. trump has ever discussed her thoughts on anything with mr. giuliani. >> the dehumanization -- it is one thing to poke fun to, have a little fun at stormy daniels which is, of course, a character

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that is an actual -- played by an actual single mother named stephanie clifford and when you go so low, giuliani lives on the corner of like cheap and mean. but this is so low, when you talk about when avenatti talks about firing giuliani, the poison, it rots from the top. >> the other thing is, giuliani to me is in the scaramucci zone. it's entertaining till it's not. it's unclear what he's doing that is actual legal defense. one more legal question. we know daniels sued keith davidson. he's on the other side of michael cohen and there's all these texts where they seem to be colluding one could say. davidson has countersued avenatti for defamation. do you have thoughts on that? >> i think it's perfectly okay for your lawyer to talk to another lawyer if you're working out another agreement as long as you know. if stormy daniels saying i

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didn't know that he was being undercut by my own lawyer. >> or being booked on cable news shows. >> i would have a fundamental problem. it comes back to women's respect. >> it's interesting to see the counter suit and where that goes. all of the things the president is entangled in legally keep multiplying. at a certain point, someone is going to roll the right number. someone's going to get the guy into i deposition. you keep multiplying the chances. thank you very much. the real reason donald trump is keeping scott pruitt around and after the break, as stories grow of children being ripped away from their parents at the border, confusion on the hill about a tentative republican immigration deal that may have happened or may have blown up. what happened next.

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we've been bringing you stories about the trump administration's horrific policy of tearing immigrant children away from their parents at border. it's important to remember the u.s. immigration system is rife with everyday cruelty, as well. like what happened to pablo villavicenzio who brought an order to an army an base, delivering a pizza on friday and detained by i.c.e. and now facing deportation as soon as next week which would leave his uz citizen wife and two daughters also americans without him. you might think that fixing the u.s. immigration system would be a priority for congress but you would be wrong. a closed door immigration meeting today ended in confusion with conflicting reports about a deal on the table, maybe or maybe not. politico reporting conservatives quickly denies any such proposal was made confound stog republicans abquickly unraveling any good will built during the two-hour conference meeting earlier in the day.

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here to help me understand what's going on, can be congressman joaquin castro of texas and jeff denham of california who has been running points on this issue as far as i can tell and can tell us exactly what happened. congressman denham, members of your caucus have gotten together what's called a discharge petition, enough signatures a majority of members of the house. you can bring something to the floor immediately to get a vote. in some respects on the daca eligible folks to give them statutory protections. you go into a meeting with republican leadership to work out a deal and what happens? >> we certainly had a very good discussion as we have in many of our different meetings. we had that same discussion with the entire republican conference. i would say it was very productive. it was a good conversation. but ultimately, you can't have an agreement till something is put on paper so that we can not only share that with the american public but certainly know the parameters of any agreement. >> i'm just going to translate that for you. you tell me if i'm translating it correctly.

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you went in and thought you had a deal, came out and the house free caucus was absolutely no way over our dead bodies? >> we had a number of different meetings with members of the freedom caucus there. ideas were thrown out. i've been willing to agree to most of those ideas as long as we have a permanent fix for dreamers. that was all laid out in conference today. now we're looking forward to seeing that in writing. > okay, so you want to get something in writing. i just want to bear down on there. is it your intention to -- you need three more signatures in the discharge petition. do you have those locked up and will you get over the magic threshold to force it? >> we do. when we set out with the rule, we made sure we had the numbers lined up. we're ready to discharge. tuesday is the day this has to get done. ultimately we'd like to see our conference come together on something that can be a bipartisan agreement. >> congressman castro, why do i feel like lucy and the football here?

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what's happening? >> first, i'm glad that jeff and 21 other republicans i think or 22 other republicans have signed on to a discharge petition to beak put this issue on the floor for a vote. at the same time, i would say that they ought to give speaker paul ryan about 12 hours or so to make a decision about whether there's going to be anything in writing or not because the country has wait today long to fix this broken immigration system and the people affected as you mentioned one gentleman at the beginning had been wait too long also. >> congressman denham, what is the resistance? your caucus? >> certainly there are concerns from some about what the pathway to citizenship would look like. i've been very consistent and very vocal that this needs to be a permanent fix for dreamers. this is something that should have been done before march 5th but because we missed that deadline, i immediately started working with the parliamentarian to see how we can actually force a vote, force a new timeline. that's what we have in front of

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us. it's forcing a conversation right now but ultimately, we want to see the full debate on the house floor. >> and chris, i would also add because you brought it up earlier, i would ask for jeff's help and the help of other republicans in ending the trump of policy of separating kids from their mothers and fathers at the border. which is an inhumane and cruel and brutal pools that even the united nations had to call out the united states on a few days ago. >> congressman, do you support or oppose that policy? >> i want to see a fixed to our broken immigration system. that is a policy done under the previous administration but ultimately yes, i agree, it needs to be fixed. you shouldn't be tearing families apart. >> factually it was not done under the administration so. >> that is not what i.c.e. or board offer patrol have been telling us. we toured the border together a few years ago and saw some of the detention centers.

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we saw people coming across the border seeking asylum. >> family detention. but what the administration is doing right now, they call it zero tolerance policy. i've read the order written by jeff sessions signed in april. he's given speeches about it. they are prosecuting everyone seeking asylum and separating children as young as 1-year-old from their parents. you think that's a bad idea i take it. >> i do think it's a bad idea. it is one more reason why we've got to come together and fix this immigration system broken for far too long. >> is there going to be a vote. >> here's my question. is there going to be a vote on something having permanent protection for daca from this congress is going to happen? is that what you're saying? >> absolutely. we will either have an agreement in writing here coming very shortly or we will be moving forward on a discharge petition that allow a full debate on each of the different issues and keep in mind, bob goodlatte, the judiciary committee has his bill so the freedom caucus has a vote on their bill, as well. the speaker president they get a

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bill, as well. >> congressman castro, do you think that's going to happen? >> again, i'm eternally optimist mystic. you have to be hopeful because we're dealing with the lives of close to 1 million people. we've got keep push pching i hope we don't see the same thing we've had in the past few years when john boehner was speaker. he said the republicans could do this thing instead of doing comprehensive reform, they would do it piecemeal. not a single bill was ever put on the floor. i hope and pray that this time it's different and we're going to keep working on our end. >> congressman denham, i've been covering this particular republican congress since it's been constituted. i've seen it the freedom caucus yield tremendous influence over the speaker forcing him to do all sorts of things. right now you're doing something no one has done so far. this is quite interesting to watch. joaquin castro, jeff deny happ, thanks for joining me.

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>> still ahead the bizarre scott pruitt headlines keep coming. new evidence of why he has somehow managed to keep his job. it has to do with donald trump's fascination with asbestos. that isn't even tonight's thing 1, thing 2. we'll show you that next. with tripadvisor, finding your perfect hotel at the lowest price... is as easy as dates, deals, done! simply enter your destination and dates... and see all the hotels for your stay! tripadvisor searches over 200 booking sites... to show you the lowest prices... so you can get the best deal on the right hotel for you. dates, deals, done! tripadvisor. visit tripadvisor.com

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do ynever thought i'dirst tsee one in real life.r? [ dinosaur screeches ] the park is in the past. run! we're not on an island anymore. there is a town five miles from here. am i dead? not yet, kid. change was inevitable and it's happening now. welcome to jurassic world. rated pg-13. thing 1 tonight, mike pence the radio talk show host who became vice president to the reality television host has

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perfected the art of standing behind the president in every possible way. like mike pence's loyalty to president trump knows no bounds. you can even see it in his eyes as jane maier describes it pence looks at trump with a devotion counsel gaze rarely seen since the days of nancy reagan. it's starting to get weird. like this scene yesterday. >> we just had a strategic plan. it's a plan for the whole community. it's a plan that i'd like to unify the federal government response. >> what was that about? did you see that? the bizarro water bottle situation with mike pence and donald trump? that's thing 2 in 60 seconds.

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so yesterday afternoon, this happened. in the middle of a meeting with fema, president trump took his water bottle off the table and put it on the floor only for mike pence to immediately pick up his water bottle and do the exact same thing. it's unclear why the president

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did that and really unclear why the vice president immediately mimicked it. but it was definitely strange and slightly creepy. but we know president trump has a weird thing about water. we've seen it many times. there was this is performance in the campaign trail mocking his primary opponent marco rubio who famously had his own difficulties with water bottles. there was the time trump paused for a drink in the midst of a speech on national security and needed both hands to lift the tiny cup from the lectern or this other time he -- this other time he had to pause a speech for a sip and somehow it went even worse. >> 17,000 jobs. thank you. they don't have water. that's okay. what? that's okay. oh. >> he did one-hand that one.

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all that is better than what happened when the president's throat was dry or so the white house said. >> let us rethink old assumptions and open our hearts and minds. god bless the united states. thank you very much.

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so here's a fun fact about the president of the united states. he has a thing for asbestos. not a thing against asbestos. that would be normal. no, trump appears to be a fan of

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the stuff that vice presidentialists say kills 12,000 to 15,000 people a year in the united states alone. in a 1997 book, donald trump claimed asbestos is "100% safe once applied," even suggesting the push 0 remove it the known carcinogen from buildings was just a mob scam. i'm quoting here "led by the mob because it was often mob related companies that would do the asbestos removal." trump's stance is almost certainly related to the cost that real estate develops are like himself might have had to pay for asbestos's removal. but defending the honor of deadly asbestos appears to be something of a life's work for the man. we unearthed this testimony before congress from 2005 and you really have to hear it to believe it. >> in new york city, we have a lot of asbestos buildings. and there's a whole debate about asbestos. a lot of people could say if the world trade center had asbestos, it wouldn't have burned down it, wouldn't have melted. okay? a lot of people think asbestos, a lot of people in my industry think it is the greatest

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fireproofing material ever made. i can tell you i've seen and tests of asbestos versus the new material that's being used and it's not even a contest. it's like a heavyweight champion against a lightweighting from high school. but in your great wisdom, you folks have said asbestos is a horrible material so it has to be removed. >> the world trade center might still be standing if only asbestos? what do you think happened when the guy who absolutely loves asbestos and wants to defend its honor from the insults of environmentalists what happens when he becomes president of the united states? a give you a lint. it involves the cartoonishly head of the epa scott pruitt. that story after this. when i red the diagnosis, i knew at that exact moment, whatever it takes, wherever i have to go...i'm beating this. my main focus was to find a team of doctors that work together. when a patient comes to ctca, they're meeting a team of physicians that specialize in the management of cancer. breast cancer treatment is continuing to evolve.

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there is yet another scott pruitt scandal today because it is a day ending with a y. in the list of scandals around the epa administrator is now getting too long for one page of this graphic. we are literally working on something bigger. we can't fit it into a graphic on your tv screen. today we learned he sent his security people to get his dry cleaning.

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or something. it really doesn't matter because there seems to be no low he can reach that would be enough to shame anyone into action. why is that? probably because the president is quite happy with the work pruitt is doing on his behalf. last week pruitt quietly announced the agency has decided it will not study negative health impacts of asbestos that is already in the environment. and that's the sort of thing that probably pleases the president, who once said this. >> in new york city we have a lot of asbestos buildings. and there's a whole debate about asbestos. a lot of people could say that if the world trade center had asbestos it wouldn't have burned down, it wouldn't have melted. okay? >> joining me now mickey edward, former republican congressman from oklahoma. katrina van den heuvel, editor of the nation. and senior energy director for the natural resources defense council. today he had assistants going to get him a special kind of lotion he liked from the ritz carlton. a government funded system that can make him pour over company.

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even in the world of tv talent who are toriously insane and impossible to work with he's over the top. all of that aside, what has the agenda in a regulatory sense been like? >> all of that is a disgrace but the real crime is what he's doing to the environment and the public health. you cannot say that you care about clean water, clean air, or getting toxics out of our food and our lifestyle and support scott pruitt. so from day one he's been dismantling the clean water act, clean power plan, clean car rules. i mean, these are things that -- common sense safeguards that the american public supports. >> the clean car -- the mileage safety standards is my favorite because all it means is that they have to make cars -- you that get better mileage out of the cars. no one is being like please, i want less gas mileage out of my car. but he has gone after that, right? >> yeah. absolutely. >> no, i mean, the corporations want that. >> well, that's the point.

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>> this is an administration which is pay to play. and the real scandal as we were talking about is not the dry cleaning or the lotion. it's the utter contempt for the epa, an agency that is supposed to protect air, health, water, food. and instead they're selling it off to the big corporations. the savage rollbacks of civilizing advances are going to take a long time to repair. but this is across the industry. it's not just trump. it's a republican habit, chris. because they've put people in charge, industry people in charge of agencies that they want to gut and they're doing it across the consumer financial protection board, the epa, a whole slew of agencies. >> pruitt's sort of a trumpian figure in some ways in terms of the kind of weird pettiness of the corruption. it just seems like there's no grift too small for him or his pride. but also he's a mainstream republican guy. he's from your state of oklahoma. >> thanks. you didn't need to bring that up. >> well, look, the history of oklahoma and fossil fuels in

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oklahoma is a tawdry, tawdry, tawdry history. and you know, he is a mainstream republican party guy. he's defended and liked by mainstream republicans. >> yeah. he is. and one of the things that has been really bothersome is the fact that so many -- it's not just scott pruitt but so many republicans in congress will put up with almost anything in order to get the policies they want. so they do it with trump. they'll do it with pruitt. if he's doing things that fit what their agenda is, they will swallow any kind of corruption, any kind of ridiculousness. it doesn't -- nothing will bother them as long as they get the policy they want. now, i spent 12 years on the appropriations committee. and what we would have done with what scott pruitt is doing now is the next budget would have prohibitions against spending money certain ways or it would have stuff cut from the budget,

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you know, to make up for what he has been spending this way. the congress is complicit in this by its silence. >> i was struck i think today cbs news had a story that republicans are ready to ditch scott pruitt because of the scandals, though they stand behind his deregulatory agenda. and i think that's what -- listen, when steve bannon, who's coming closer back into this administration, talked about dismantdling the administrative state, or drain the swamp, they're talking about dismantling the protections that have made this a healthier country. there are two institutions interestingly. the pentagon, a conservative institution, understands the crisis that climate is and stands with those who are fighting pruitt in many ways. and i think city and state. chris has followed this. the divestment movement. new york city sold its fossil fuel stocks. this is happening across the country. and 500 candidates have signed a pledge not to take a center from oil, gas, or coal money. that is vital to fight for. >> and he also is getting -- part of the thing about pruitt is they like his agenda.

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the energy industry likes his agenda, the sort of regulatory rollbacks. the big one he's done on climate, which is rolling back the kind of clean power plant plan, that hasn't gone into effect yet because he's getting sued all over the place in court. >> right. so what do you have? you have the rule of law. you have science. and you have public interest. these three things together are what are going to enable us to win in the end. and you're right. the states and the cities and even private industry elsewhere, other than the fossil fuel industry, are leading the charge on all the issues people care about. >> but specifically on this, he has not been able to roll back the clean power plant stuff. >> they have not won a single case in court. because -- >> this is key. i want people to understand this. because there's all this talk about scott pruitt's so successful. he is being fought in the courts and he has not won yet. >> there's judicial legal resistance. >> yes. the one funny thing about the political resistance, you say as they're standing by. mickey, this cracks me up. if there's one thing that's going to be his undoing is he's basically trying to gut ethanol in the renewable portfolio standard.

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no, seriously. all of the sudden chuck grassley and joni ernst. i watched joni ernst on chuck todd's program. they are aghast. they are outraged. not really about the scandals, though they are about that, but because he's going after ethanol. and i think that probably puts him in more political peril than anything else he's done. >> one of the things -- well, it also goes with what trump is doing on tariffs. you know, what they're doing is hurting their own constituency. it's just nonsense. it's not like they're winning. they're actually doing harm to what they say is their own agenda. >> but i think it's important to look at the real scandal because if people look at just -- i mean, it's kind of fun and ugly and odious to look at these grotesqueries. but there's a deeper scandal here. and i think when people go vote they care about clean air, safe food and those issues for their kids. >> you're going to pry ritz carlton lotion scandals from my cold dead hands and used trump mattress. i wake up every morning praying for the news gods to deliver something even more

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cringe-inducing than yesterday's. and so far the news gods have delivered. mickey edwards, katrina vaend heuvel, and dale bryk, thanks so much for joining us. that is "all in" for this evening. tonight rudolph giuliani's pr campaign fines an unlikely critic, first lady melania trump, while her husband, the president, just can't stop attacking the fbi director that he fired. breaking from "the new york times" tonight, with mueller closing in, manafort's allies abandon him. plus is rigorous preparation prior to a summit with a cagey north korean dictator overrated perhaps? the president says the meeting will depend more on attitude. and on the eve of a visit to canada for the g7 summit, president trump insults the host. that would be the canadian prime minister. "the 11th hour" on a thursday night begins now. well, good evening once again from our nbc news headquarters here in new york.